on our last day in new york

Chaim ben Avram

We didn’t come by ferry—I hid
the ferry in drywall. I used a canister of early spring
to thaw the surfaces of the last city that came between us.
I color our walls the white of my tooth,
so as to signify my surrender to tears our tongues wept.

        The city—they say as if there’s no other—is a blindfold
of gimmicky afterlives, gridlock and subway
sparks enveloping the open wounds of our eyes.

We stand now in a pasture of synthetic
lawn and watch the trees cannot grow.
We walk past shops selling beauty
and corsets made from whalebones.
Our last day in New York rivals the whole of Exodus;

    Genesis, to recap, has passengers
aboard a ferry trying to scare up cities of dry
land from what feels like years of early spring
and every breath of theirs fates others to drown,
so many that by voyage’s end there won’t be any
dead left to bury.

The ark is actually a cattle car
and the sea, an expanse of copper railway.

        Come watch the skylarks with me conspiring in the understory
of the skyline. Hold out your hands and they’ll come to you,
like any feather that has our skin
mistaken for a pyre.

Chaim ben Avram is a poet whose work appears in Denver Quarterly, Foothill, Rhino, 14 Hills, West Branch, Tin House, Chiron Review, SpringGun, The Boiler, softblow, decomP, and LUMINA Journal. A more extensive archive can be found at cbavram.com. 

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